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Chinese Public Willingness to Pay to Avoid Having Nuclear Power Plants in the Neighborhood

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Chinese Public Willingness to Pay to Avoid Having Nuclear Power Plants in the Neighborhood Sustainability 2014, 6, 7197-7223; doi:10.3390/su6107197 OPEN ACCESS sustainability ISSN 2071-1050 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Article Chinese Public Willingness to Pay to Avoid Having Nuclear Power Plants in the Neighborhood Chuanwang Sun 1,2, Nan Lyu 1,2 and Xiaoling Ouyang 2,3,* 1 China Center for Energy Economics Research, School of Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China; E-Mails: [email protected] (C.S.); [email protected] (N.L.) 2 Collaborative Innovation Center for Energy Economics and Energy Policy, China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China 3 Department of Economics, Business School, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200241, China * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: [email protected]; Tel./Fax: +86-21-5434-4958. External Editor: Ning Zhang Received: 30 July 2014; in revised version: 16 September 2014 / Accepted: 23 September 2014 / Published: 17 October 2014 Abstract: In spite of the decreasing share of nuclear power all over the world, China resumed the approval of large-scale construction of nuclear power plants in 2012. However, influenced by the worldwide spreading anti-nuclear attitudes, people who live near nuclear power plants showed increasing concerns about nuclear risks. Consequently, the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome of nuclear power plants should be evaluated prudently to support the healthy development of nuclear power in China. Based on the face-to-face survey data, this study estimates Chinese public willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid having nuclear power plants in the neighborhood. The respondents include both residents who currently live near and those who would live near nuclear power plants in the future. Considering the possible presence of the sample selection bias caused by protest responses, this paper constructs a two-step sample selection model with the protest responses and the double bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) questions. Using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), we measure the effects of influencing factors of public WTP and study the decay of WTP with longer distances from nuclear power plants. The results suggest that most people are willing to pay higher electricity prices to avoid having nuclear power plants in the neighborhood. Comparing the WTP to avoid having nuclear power plants nearby with Sustainability 2014, 6 7198 the current electricity price, we find that there is an increase of 56.7% and 69.1% of respondents’ WTP for a nuclear power plant located 80 km and 30 km, respectively. Keywords: Not In My Backyard (NIMBY); nuclear power; Contingent Valuation Method (CVM); sustainability 1. Introduction The Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 has made severe social, political and economic impacts worldwide, making nuclear power come to the fore as threats to global society [1,2]. Opinion polls show that public support for nuclear power has declined dramatically since the Fukushima nuclear disaster [3]. Public attitude towards nuclear power has played an important role in energy policy-making since the accident, and has made public rejection towards nuclear power a critical problem for nuclear policy all over the world [4], especially for countries with a high density of nuclear power reactors and extensive operational experience of nuclear power plants [5]. Most public protests can be attributed to the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) attitude regarding nuclear power facilities. This phenomenon, which has been widely reported [6–9], is the case that the construction of new nuclear facilities is often strongly opposed by residents who live in the neighborhood [10]. Due to the sharp decline of public acceptance, the share of nuclear power in electricity generation decreased from 16.8% in 2011 to 13.5% in 2012 [11]. For example, Japan has shut all 50 nuclear power plants down. Countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Belgium have confirmed the closing-down policies under the public pressure [12]. By contrast, China has the most ambitious nuclear expansion plan after the Fukushima nuclear disaster [13]. The government has showed determinations to accelerate the development of nuclear power. Specifically, by the end of 2014, China would increase 8.64 gigawatt-electric (GWe) of nuclear power installed capacity, three times the increment in 2013 [14]. According to the National Nuclear Long-and-medium Term Development Planning (2011–2020) [15], China plans to realize 88 GWe of nuclear power installed capacity by 2020. This goal implies that nuclear power in China will exceed the total electricity consumption in Canada in 2012 [16]. More long-term plans for future capacity are 200 GWe by 2030 and 400 GWe by 2050 [17]. Most of China’s nuclear power reactors are located in the coastal regions, which involves only 5.8% of the whole population [18] and small towns and cities. In addition, nuclear power generation only accounts for 2.1% of total power generation in China [19], far below the world average level (11%) [20]. According to the research by Nature News in cooperation with Columbia University [21], 75 million people live near 49 nuclear power reactors in China, which includes nuclear power plants under construction and in operation, and the distances are in the range of 75 kilometers (km). Different from the anti-nuclear activities in other countries, in the past, nuclear power plants did not have a wide impact in China in view of the large population base and vast land. However, we should note that China is currently facing a rapid nuclear power expansion (13 times the current installed nuclear power capacity by 2050) [22]. Considering that the nuclear power installed capacity will be twice as great as before, and China will expand nuclear power from coastal to inland regions in the near future, the number of residents who live near nuclear power plants will have a rapid growth. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the voice of anti-nuclear seems to be louder, especially Sustainability 2014, 6 7199 from those who live in the neighborhood. People living nearby have, apparently, shown their anxiety [23]. There have been several anti-nuclear activities in local areas in recent years, which have affected the attitude of people who live in other places of China. Hence, a concern is provoked that China’s nuclear expansion could possibly lead to a more severe NIMBY attitude among the public, as more residents and regions will be affected. This attitude in turn may have a negative impact on nuclear power expansion in the future. To summarize, studies of Chinese public willingness to pay to avoid having nuclear power stations in the neighborhood are believed to be mandatory. The NIMBY phenomena are highly complex, representing a wide range of facilities and participants [24]. There are definite regulations about the location and safe distance of NIMBY facilities in many countries [25], but evaluation of safety distance by residents in terms of the vicinity of the facilities is always greater than that identified by the government. Similar to nuclear power plants, paraxylene (PX, a chemical essential) plants are also NIMBY facilities, which have been strongly opposed by the general public in China in recent years. PX plants are common in many countries [26], which are usually kept 4 km away from the city center in Korea [27], and 5 km from the city center in Singapore [28]. However, a planned PX project with a distance of 7 km from the city center in Xiamen was stopped because of the public protest. This phenomenon shows that the distance by regulation doesn’t fall in line with the accepted distance by the public. In this context, this study tries to find out how the public reacts to the location of a new nuclear power plant in the distance of 30 km and 80 km separately, based on data from the survey of China’s Public Perception of Nuclear Power (CPPNP). The survey of CPPNP, launched by China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University once or twice a year from 2013, is a nationwide face-to-face survey focuses on the public perception of nuclear power. This paper attempts to answer three questions as follows: First, is there a NIMBY attitude towards nuclear power plants among residents in China, including both the residents who currently live near and those who will live near the plants in the future? How do socio-economic characteristics, such as income, age and gender, affect Chinese public willingness to pay to avoid having nuclear power stations in the neighborhood? Second, will residents show different WTP at different construction phases of the NIMBY facilities? In our study, we explore this by evaluating and comparing the WTP of residents who live in coastal areas where nuclear power plants have already constructed, and those who live in inland areas where nuclear power plants would be built in the future. Third, how does the public WTP change with the dwelling distance from nuclear power plants? What’s the residents’ estimated safety distance from nuclear power plants? Does the safety distance accepted by the public fall in line with that regulated by the government? The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the main research on NIMBY of nuclear power plants and the evaluation methods of WTP. Section 3 describes the data from CPPNP and the methodological approach used in this study, which corrects the possible selection bias due to protest responses. Section 4 presents the empirical results, in which we analyze public WTP by answering the three questions above. Finally, Section 5 provides conclusions and gives policy suggestions. Sustainability 2014, 6 7200 2. Literature Review 2.1. Research of Public Attitude towards Nuclear Power Considering the global environmental and economic development [29,30], nuclear energy has been attached worldwide attention to its impacts on greenhouse gases emissions reduction [13,31,32].
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